Institutions of higher learning across Texas — including the Texas A&M University System and the Alamo Colleges — could soon follow.

The average UTSA undergrad paid $4,403 for the 2011-12 academic year and will see the bill reach $4,478 for the 2012-13 school year and $4,553 for the 2013-14 school year, UTSA officials said. The university enrolls about 31,000 students.

Most Popular

Graduate and professional degree students at UTSA will face increases of 3.6 percent next fall.

Regents approved similar increases for several other schools, including the UT Health Science Center, where medical school students who are Texas residents will see tuition and fees go from $17,033 for the current academic year to $17,314 for 2013-14.

But they gave an unexpected reprieve to UT-Austin undergraduate students who are Texas residents, freezing their tuition — which averages $4,896 per year — for the next two years.

Most of the increases were smaller than requested by the universities. UTSA and UT-Austin, for instance, had originally asked for hikes of 2.6 percent.

Regents Chairman Gene Powell said he countered those requests to lessen the financial burden on student's families.

The money UT-Austin had expected from a tuition increase can be offset by allocations in Available University Funds, said Pedro Reyes, interim executive vice chancellor for academic affairs.

But the university's president, Bill Powers, said a temporary injection of funds can't take the place of recurring funding.

“When we plan curriculum, course redesign, advising, we set up programs that, to be effective, have to persist into the future,” Powers said.

UTSA President Ricardo Romo said he had hoped to use the additional tuition revenue to hire professors to reduce a student-faculty ratio, which is 25-to-1, and to boost the number of advisers for students.

With less tuition income, Romo said, “we're not going to see any increases in our faculty hires. This is just to keep us going.”

Xavier Johnson, UTSA's student government association president, said students have mixed views of the increase and some feel disenfranchised from the process.

More Information

If tuition is going to increase, the revenue should be used to address student priorities, Johnson said. At UTSA these often focus on parking, transportation costs and access to campus — although some students have raised concerns about the need for more advising, he added.

Texas A&M University regents, meeting in College Station, may vote on tuition and fee increases at several A&M schools today.

The system's San Antonio campus has proposed a fee increase of $150 per semester for undergraduate students taking 15 credit hours starting in the fall, followed by a similar increase the following year, said Ken Mitts, the university's chief financial officer and vice president for finance and administration.

Alamo Colleges trustees could take action on a 3 percent tuition hike for next fall during a Saturday morning board retreat.